Market Analysis for Peatland Financing Mechanisms in Uganda and Rwanda
Assessing financing models, market actors, and partnership pathways to scale sustainable peatland management
-
Photo by Pix Tresa on Unsplash
October 1, 2025
Peatlands are among the world’s most important ecosystems for climate protection and biodiversity — storing roughly twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined, regulating flooding, securing drinking water supplies, and sustaining unique habitats. Yet in Uganda and Rwanda, peatlands were increasingly degraded through drainage for agriculture, peat extraction, and infrastructure development, driving significant greenhouse gas emissions and eroding vital ecosystem services.
What
As part of GIZ’s Peat4People project, which strengthened the technical and financial capacities of key stakeholders for the sustainable management of peatlands in Uganda and Rwanda, Climate & Company supported the identification and assessment of viable financing mechanisms capable of creating real incentives for local communities — offering alternatives to peat extraction and unsustainable drainage. Building on an earlier study on financing solutions for smallholders and deforestation-free supply chains (the SAFE study), the assignment translated existing market knowledge into a peatland-specific analysis to prepare the ground for piloting.
How?
Climate & Company carried out the assignment across three main strands of work:
- Assessment of financing models and investor strategies — screening nature-based solutions financing types from the SAFE mapping for their transferability to peatland protection, and evaluating their implementation potential and scalability in Uganda and Rwanda.
- Mapping of relevant market actors and EU regulation — screening companies, impact investors, banks, and public buyers with climate and biodiversity commitments (including members of the Science Based Targets Network, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, and GRI), identifying early movers and buyer profiles in the peatland sector, and reviewing EU policy developments such as the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) relevant to peatland carbon and biodiversity credits.
- Recommendations for partnership development — developing initial approaches for engaging potential buyers and building strategic partnerships, assessing the progressiveness of Ugandan and Rwandan policy frameworks on biodiversity and carbon credits in an international comparison, and interpreting the market mapping results for direct use by the Peat4People project team.
Findings were shared with the Peat4People project through presentations and briefings, feeding directly into the project’s efforts to pilot financing mechanisms on the ground.
Get in touch
